Economics of War - Iraq Invasion, Iran next. Syriana dir. Stephen Gaghan on The Henry Rollins Show

Director Stephen Gaghan (Syriana, Traffic) on conversing with Mr. Garfield on IFC's The Henry Rollins Show, about what he learned researching for Syriana.

After being toured around the Middle East with the CIA's former Iraq Bureau Chief, Robert Baer, and meeting every large oil and arms dealer (as well as Hezbollah's spiritual leader, Sayyed Fadlullah), he reports that the arms and oil businesses are he same thing.

When the world's energy supply is declining, your nation's consumption far outpaces the rest of the world, your entire national infrastructure is built upon the expectation of cheap abundant fossil fuel, and your foreign policy has excluded you from extracting oil from the world's potentially 2nd largest oil supply... what do you do?

You initiate a war to reset the table. You country now has a seat at the table for that oil, and the nation you went to war with, now needs arms to protect itself from your mutual enemy (Iran.) Thankfully, a large portion of your economy is built upon arms exporting, and your new friends have plenty of the currency used to trade. It did cost your trillions of tax dollars to pull it off, and your 'friends' population could use that wealth.. but now, you got that oil, and they've got those 'guns.' Massive economic restructuring of America averted! Gotta keep it going though... who's next?

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[gim10003]

Not quite: (1) resetting the table for oil concessions was only 1/2 the oil-related motive; the other was long term security for our access to gulf oil by replacing a hostile, erratic regime with a US-friendly regime, one that would also give us a military base; (2) there is no way the US people would have supported war on this basis. People don't understand energy geopolitics. The WMD rationale was a tough enough sell; an oil rationale would have fallen flat.

[RunningMyChains123]

what a fag

[crock703]

@crock703

The reason I think Obama didn't eviscerate BP, or really use the spill to end off-shore drilling, get a real energy/climate bill, and a move towards alt energy, is that the oil companies would just hike the price of gas so that the dems would lose Congress.

Did you notice how the price of gas dropped 20-30 cents the day the gulf started gushing? And those disingenuous "gas tax will tax us to death!" commercials suddenly appeared again? The oil companies call the shots.

[crock703]

@crock703

That said, the smarter thing would be to tax gas more (or temporarily nationalize the companies and collect the price-gouged profits and reinvest it in alternative energy, battery technology, and high speed rail.)

The govt is owned though and the populace is too dumb handle the truth about energy. If the dems openly pursued that, the GOP would just cry "communist"/"taxes!" and keep lying until they were back in power, then full on liquidate the middle class.

[crock703]

@crock703

Unlike Europe, our country was built around the car. It costs more to move yourself or anything you want to sell because we just have a big spread-out country.

America was built on and designed around cheap energy. There's gonna be less of it, and more people wanting it, and what's left, is generally spoken for (unless you "reset the table.")

[crock703]

@NetSquad

That's not entirely true. In general, yeah, there is a lot of mistaking U.S./multi-national corporate interests with the interests of U.S. citizens. but, energy, unlike diamonds, is a daily necessity for everyone. Our meddling in the Middle East is why Saudi Arabia sells us oil for far less than its worth (because we give them arms, make them our ally, and look the other way on their domestic policy.)

If we paid fair market value for oil, $6+ per gallon, our economy would choke.

[NetSquad]

Its not in the US people's interest to go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Its in the interest of the super rich who make the profit off your labour, your blood, your tax. We have to realize that "US interests" are not 'Your interests' , they are the interests of a group of elites who get richer everyday whilst sons, daughters, brothers and sisters are dieing around the world. Reject falsehood. Accept truth.

PEACE

[crock703]

Please share this video with your friends and family.

[iYobo1000]

what a fucked up logic.... what kind of justice is it when we go and kill, murder mass of civilians and claim their natural resources, and leave the country in chaos...while we pain the image of heroes to ourselves.